Pakistan: Exiled leaders announce global campaign against Baloch genocide

Baloch leaders Nawab Brahumdagh Bugti and Nawab Mehran Marri have announced a global campaign to end the genocide of their people in Pakistan.

Releasing a joint statement both said that the Pakistani civilian administration and security forces have not put a stop to their inhuman atrocities in Balochistan and added that this victimization of their people is being intensified with each passing day.

"Gross human rights abuses, war crimes, enforced disappearances, torture, recovery of mutilated dead bodies and targeting of civilians including women and children have become a routine practice by Pakistani security forces in Balochistan. These are crimes against humanity and sheer violations of international laws," both said.

In the light of this worsening situation, they announced plans to launch an international awareness campaign against Baloch genocide.

The campaign would include protest demonstrations, advertisements, pamphleting and other means to draw the attention of the international community, human rights groups, international media and general public to their cause.

The campaign, they said, is aimed at pushing world power centers, including European capitals, to intervene and stop the Baloch genocide.

For decades in Balochistan, economic exploitation through the plundering of natural resources, and the systematic economic, social and political exclusion of indigenous Baloch people, has become a norm.

In addition to this, enforced disappearances, extra-judicial killings and an escalating crackdown on freedom of expression are used as covert tools to brutally repress the Baloch peaceful struggle for justice, rights and equality.

Since the construction of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)has begun, the Baloch have been forcefully cleared, enforcedly disappeared and effectively excluded from the project at all levels - despite plentiful promises made by the Pakistani authorities of development and employment.

-ANI